Acer TimelineX 3820TG Owners Lounge. Info, benchmarks, tweaks, mods and upgrades

Looks good. What's the resolution for that monitor?

 

Mine came with an AUO122C, not that I know the difference, if there is any. Everest reported an manufacture date of week 1 2008, which I doubt is correct.

My 3820TG assembly date is 10. June.

 

here is a pic of my setup


left , acer
middle hp envy 15

far right asus n50

behind 21.5 inch lg monitor

all at full brightness

 

Eya, I'm a mountain-monkey too I'd presume we'd have 3820TGs of the same batch, but my display is a AUO322C with manufacture date 2009. What store did you buy from, MPX? Wonder what the differences are..

To jump to another topic, on OC'ing (CPU). You are not seeing the "glue" effect I've reported in certain older games, such as GRID, DIRT or Civilization IV?

Mac

 

Doesn't this beat the i7 620m overclocked GPU score? Impressive stuff...I'm interested to also hear if Macros glue effect is unique to his system or others have this issue with OC'ed ?

Here was mine next to my Gateway, its much brighter so it didn;t come out good. But the screen is fine.

 

Okay so here if a video of my problem well i find it a issue cause my other laptops dont have this issue

When you open and close windows etc or even scroll on webpage you can see the change where the monitor dims, and then lights up then dims and lights up. my other laptop that my sister has right now the asus ul30 which has an LED screen doesn't have this behaviour

<embed src="http://img46.imageshack.us/flvplayer.swf?f=P00004" width='480' height="380" allowFullScreen="true" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"/>

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

 

How do you achieve such clocks on the 450M?

 

Okay, to really explain what I mean by "glue" effec on a OC'd i5-450 I made a video and uploaded it to Youtube.

Here ya go.

<param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/10dtAHPGi-E&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1?hd=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/10dtAHPGi-E&amp;hl=en_GB&amp;fs=1?hd=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width='640' height="385"></embed></object>

The glue effect is evident 4-5 times through that 30 sec clip. Might be hard to spot if you don't know what you're looking for in a crappy video such as this. Keep an eye on the walls of the track and blow up the video to full size. Perhaps the most noticeable is just before the end or in the first corner. Notice how "soft" it is, it just slows down almost to a halt and then just as softly resumes. It's not the classic stuttering one normally mean when one talk about lag.

Mac

 

Still no idea what you're talking about. That video looks great lolz.

 

I saw it its a type of slowdown that is very odd. As if its going into slow mo but its not. Its a strange one.

 

Is it when teh car sorta swerves, and I thought it was YT lag?

 

It's almost like the bullet-time effect in the Max Payne games Unfortunately it doesn't do much good in a car game. Tempted to pick up the original hd and do a clean Win7 install on it just to check if it's something I did. When I got it I reformated and installed a clean Win7, later I got the Momentus XT and just cloned the install from the old drive, issue is there on both HDs.

Mac

 

like around the 9 second mark? when it slows down right?

 

wow, is like having an ambient sensor.

 

thats exactly what i thought!!! but it only happens on low brightness!!

or even when u try to post in here, and one part of the screen is grey and the other part has some orange banner, it's like the LEDs are trying to keep up with what is going on, like a blooming effect or something

 

Hey, can someone take closeup picture of the power adapter? especially the AC end of it. I was wondering what kind of cable I should order to get the North American plug.

 

Do you have any "glue" effect problems OC-Freak?

 

is catalyst 10.6 working fine with switchable graphics? I saw a link on the front page, but in the release notes it says that "Switchable Graphics enabled notebooks using Intel chipsets." are not supported.

que pasa?

I'm pushing real hard to get some Envy 14 OC'ing. Another 2000 points on 3dmark06, and I think I'll feel comfortable, but still sad that the 3820tg is out of my reach.

 

Wholesale-HIPRO HP A0904A3 19V 4.74A AC Power Adapter cord 01468

same model and everything.

 

Thanks. Seems like a pretty standard three line port.

 

Okay so i got a weird issue, maybe i am missing something.


IF i hit CAPS LOCK and i start typing all is great

IF i want capitals off and hit CAPS lock to turn it off.. it wont work!!!

I have to hit the SHIFT key to take caps lock off

!!

EDIT: fixed stupid keyboard settings didn't even know that was an option

 

time to format your machine and determine if the issue lies with the software?

fortunately for my case, no such issue

 

well i went to control panel, region and language .. then keyboards and langauges.. change keyboards.. advance key settinngs and moved the dot around. I am not sure as to why the other way to turn off caps was enabled in the first place !

 

Has any other Canadian or American on this thread ever experienced this battery restriction injustice that we seem to be facing? How do all these new laptops and cel phones get shipped into our country, is it all done by ocean freighter from China?

In the age of lithium type batteries in practically every decent electronic device we see today, I just can't believe this policy!! This is friggin' ridiculous!!

Rant over.

 

No I have an 3820TG imported by Hattelco, which got in stock early July. The batch imported by itegra/komplett got in stock laty may/early june depending on model.

I'll try Civ IV later, doubt I'll bother installing the other games as I'm not going to play them.

What HDD did you get in yours? I got WD 500Gb someone has been gettting Toshiba or seagate harddrives which I prefer over WD due to the annoying clicking sounds when idling and the small lag/stuttering WD disks gives in games.

 

Mine came with a WD 320. Swapped it with one of the new Seagate Momentus XT 320gb's. Much better.

In Civ IV you'll see it if you have it, when you go back and fort from one end to the other end of the map. Not really while zooming in or out. The panning sort of jumps/flickers.

Mac

 

Got my 3820 back today. Acer can't be bothered to fix it, said there was nothing wrong with the set. So I did some calibrations on my own, and realized there was a red color bias on my set. I dropped the blues, and now it looks pretty normal, though the contrast is still a little low for my liking. I guess I can live with that =)

 

Here's a picture of the lower cord.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/6473594-post1709.html

Here's a couple of Amazon listings.

Amazon.com: Pwr+ 6 Ft/foot/feet Ac Power Adapter Us Extension Wall Cord Power Cable for Acer Aspire 1680 2010 3000 3002 3003 3500 3600 3610 3650 3680 4520 4530 4730 5000 5050 5100 5315 5515 5520 5530 5535 5536 5580 5715 5720 5730 5735 5920 7100 9100

Amazon.com: Ac Power Cord for Acer: Electronics

Bronsky

 

It is pretty clear that most laptops shpped from the manufacturers come by air. In the Envy thread, they track their units from China to their home because they are shipped FedEx. I suspect (but don't really know) that the issue may be related to shipping notebooks (A/K/A Units with batteries) in the mail. Mail is often shipped in airfrieght containers that are carried in the belly of a plane. Companies like FedEx and UPS have their own fleet. I would guess that they do not have these restrictions. So, the answer to this dilemma might (just a guess) be as simple as finding a company that will ship UPS or FedEx.

 

OK the first real results of 450 vs 520. I think a nice overclock would easily outperform this difference!

 

So the Passmark scores, which put the I5-450M outperforming the I5-520M were wrong. I thought they weren't right. When you look at the scores in total, they don't make a lot of sense.

Nevertheless, these are close. What they don't account for are the differences in real world performance that will be caused by AES protocols and the other items in the, so called, Comm suite. For any business application, the choice would clearly favor the I5-520M or better dual core, even at $100. That is, if you could buy one in the US. The 520M 3820TG is a better business machine IMO than the 450M 3820TG.

But, Hendrickson has me really thinking long and hard about the I7-620M upgrade. The I5-450M seems to perform so well that, I'm not sure it's worth the $300 differential and all of the work involved. I'm going to try to OC the 450M and see how that performs at work. (If somebody could repost the SetFSB link again, it would save me a trip back in the threads).

At this point, if I don't do the I7 upgrade, all I would have to do is OC the CPU, take off my keyboard, wire a power source and tape it down with double sided tape when reassembling it. Then I would be done messing with this unit for now. I do, afterall, have a sailboat with a jet engine that needs my attention.

Bronsky

 

I'm about 99% sure the i7 620m upgrade is not worth it. I'm going to buy another, 3820TG. This time with the UTMS and i5 450m I can overclock to 2.8Ghz (3.2 turbo).

I paid 800 euros for this unit, the i5 450m is 899 euros. The i7 620m is 299 USD or more about 230 euros. So thats my logic in the matter. I don't stand to lose to much and the UMTS is something I really wanted in the first place but due to time constraints i had to get the i5 430.

In my eyes its worth it for the OC and my unit should sell well in Ebay as there are no other 5650 models out yet.

My 3820TG will be up on ebay soon, the worlds first backlit US keyboard one

@ Mac have you tired a new windows install? Its odd you have this "glue / slowdown" issue only on older games.

 

You're right.

I bought mine early June, the shop You mean didn't offer this unit then, the cheapest I've found was 216.000- HUF, we'll see how much cheaper the best offer would be for the 450M, any guess on the price (I don't think it would sell less than 235.000 HUF)?

 

Oh, for the glue effect, I am quite sure it has nothing to do with the 3820TG specially. Is is either video card driver, or some disk i/o bottleneck, for example because of a background loading or saving, or a badly written game going weird because of Turbo. I know nVidia puts a lots of effort to optimise drivers in a way to be sure that the gameplay is "smooth". No matter how strange it sound nVidia was always better with drivers and game experience. I don't know how is ATI nowadays.

 

My Acer, hard at work on a Sunday morning. Doing what it does best.

Bronsky

 

Well, I'm not at all sure anymore what's the cause. If it was a driver issue I'd seen in running at stock speeds too. Remember it's only happening when the INTEL CPU on a INTEL CHIPSET MOBO is clocked. The 5650 clocked alone don't give this strange effect.

Mac

 

Oh, I see. Is there any option to disable Turbo Boost in the BIOS? On desktop overclocking it's the first step with the i5 i7 processors, at least in all overclocking guides the Turbo is always disabled. So is EIST. Even Anandtech disables these things for all it's reviews.

 

No the option is not avaible in the standard bios.

A bios mod is at moment not possible.

 

No option in BIOS. Might be possible with the right program though. Only thing I've been able to do is to "lock" it at max turbo boost speed, i.e. it doesn't clock down.

Mac

 

The AES function is a part of technologie, which will become important in the next releases of a few programms for cryptologie. But at the moment it is very useless because you need a few special commands to load the hardware AES unit and this didn't happen at the moment.

The cpu is not able to detect an AES operation which is written in an "old style" and transfer it to the AES.

VIA has also a processor with AES function but no great software company have had a look at it.

 

I understood that it was already in use in my proprietary GIS software which is designed to Mil Spec.

Bronsky

 

Just a thought, is it possible to underclock the CPU to save battery power?

Maybe clock it down to say 1.6Ghz just for basic email tasks etc?

 

With the standard settings the cpu speed goes down to 1,33GHz.

A BClk of 120MHz crash the system.

 

Also posted this in my 5820TG review thread, but here goes:

A few shots to show difference between 3820TG and 5820TG.



The 3820TG on top of the 5820TG to illustrate the size difference. Notice that the 3820 has silver alu finish while the 5820 has dark gray alu finish, this is a big plus for the 3820. Fingerprints are almost invisible on the silver finish, but very visible on black/dark gray finish.



The right side, 3820 has fan/vent for GPU instead of ODD.



Left side.



Tried to get an image of the thickness difference, but it was hard to illustrate, 5820TG is about 2mm thicker than 3820TG.



With screen open.




Two different shots illustrating the screens. Both are at max brightness. I rate the Samsung screen in the 5820TG as a lot better than the AUO screen in the 3820TG. 5820TG viewing angles are better, colours are more natural, contrast feels better and most importantly, it doesn't have a pixel pattern that gives a feeling of stripes from upper left corner to lower right corner of the screen.

 

FYI - Some discussion of the new lithium battery regulations that came into play in 2009 in the US: Lithium Battery Shipping Regulations - Nexergy

Short story is you can send them air no problem, but the units have to go through a UN testing process and be packed according to the regulations. If they haven't yet, the shipper can still get the USDOT to give them a waiver. It's very possible that your german company simply didn't have the correct documentation to prove acer's compliance.

 

A few 5820TG vs 3820TG tests (specs are same, HD5650/i5-450m).

3dmark06 stock speeds:



5820TG scores 7602



3820TG scores 7483

3dmark06 at 720/1100MHz GPU speeds:



5820TG scores 9545



3820TG scores 9443

I noticed especially that CPU scores were lower for the 3820TG, so I did an quick test with passmark as well.



5820TG got an overall score of 2735.8



3820TG got an overall score of 2623.9

So with same specs, same (or at least very close) drivers the 5820TG performs slightly better, for reasons unknown. Both computers are running the default acer win7 install. I have installed intel turbo boost driver (I don't know why, but I feel the CPU performs sligtly better after installing it), latest wireless driver and ATI 10.6 suite on both.

 

The wifi in my 1410TG has a better range than that in my 3820TG. I will probably be changing that, since I like to sit outside my house early in the morning or on occasional weekends and catch up with a work a bit. I had a few dropped signals and went around testing the reception in my yard. I was surprised by the short range of the wifi. I had my 1410T right next to it and had no problems. I could still pick up signals 30% to 50% farther than the 3820TG. I guess it's time for a new wifi.

Bronsky

@OC-Freak - link to the turbo driver? I have the turbo driver from my backup, is the Intel one any newer? Notice any improvement from the wifi driver? It would be nice if my problem was just a crappy driver.

Re: your pictures - my 3820TG is the dark color, not the silver. I like the lighter color. Mine shows prints as much as the 1410T plastic did. The 720 resolution seems okay on teh 13.3" display. It is richer. It really fades by the time you get to 15.6" No wonder we are hearing complaints even from the 4820TG owners. I'm struck by the difference in size.

 

The broadcom wifi that is in both my 5820TG and 3820TG has S H I T T Y range to be honest. in my bedroom I barely have signal (is at level 1 of 5, but has not dropped out yet), my asus X77JA is at level 3 of 5 with atheros wifi, my old acer 5930G had intel wifi and was at full 5/5 in same room.... Yeah go grab some intel wifi if you are having signal issues.
And nope latest drivers didn't change anything.

I use the latest intel turbo boost drivers from here intel drivers pour chipsets (yes I know the ty site has an million popups, but they have many up-to-date drivers available.)

 

Software is the same Huawei software (Mobile partner) that comes in huawei usb sticks. SMS is possible but no voice calling. Don't know does the module even support voice in hardware.

 

I don't think it's been posted yet, but here's a link on ebay for a replacement glossy and matte displays that are supposed to fit the 3820tg......Bronsky, I'm looking at you

http://cgi.ebay.com/LCD-Screen-Acer...Computing_LaptopAccess_RL&hash=item5adada88e0